NEED TO FLEE? KANSAS CITY'S THE PLACE TO BE

Making a familiar case for more roads and using the newer argument of homeland security, a trade association for highway builders and the automotive industry recently gave most of the nation's biggest metropolitan areas failing grades for how well they would evacuate their populations in a disaster.

Twenty of 37 urban areas received an F from the American Highways Users Alliance. The list included usual suspects such as New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, Philadelphia and Washington. Miami, with a failing score of 36.9, was fourth from the bottom of the list.

Only Kansas City got an A.

The Bush administration and Congress have emphasized mass-evacuation planning since Hurricane Katrina and the destruction of much of New Orleans. The Department of Homeland Security this summer found such plans inadequate in about 90 percent of the nation's top 75 cities and "an area of profound concern." Pushed by Congress, the agency will award $1.3 billion in homeland security grants next year, partly on the basis of plan improvement.

The alliance's grades were based on three factors:

each city's internal congestion;

percentage of automobile ownership;

percentage of vehicles that local highways could move in 12 hours.

The alliance recommended national standards, better planning and more roads and car ownership.

The federal government is pushing coastal states to do some of that. The Transportation Department reviewed plans for five Gulf Coast states. Homeland Security prepared to move 141,000 people by bus, train or plane from New Orleans if necessary, while arguing with Louisiana about sheltering 150,000 others, setting collection points and identifying vulnerable groups like the sick and elderly.

Outside hurricane country and high-threat cities such as New York and Washington, however, analysts are hard-pressed to envision scenarios in which officials would want to evacuate an entire metropolitan area in 12 hours.

EVACUATION RATINGS

A study assigned evacuation-capacity scores to major urban areas based on the capacity of roadways leading out of the city, internal traffic flow, number of residents with cars and other factors.

Here are the top 10 areas and their scores:

Kansas City 90.0

Columbus 82.3

Memphis 80.5

Pittsburgh 80.4

Indianapolis 79.2

Cincinnati 79.0

Cleveland 74.5

Orlando 74.1

San Antonio 73.5

St. Louis 70.6

Following are the bottom 10 areas and their scores:

Detroit 47.3

Washington 44.9

Phoenix 43.6

Seattle 39.9

San Diego 37.8

San Francisco-San Jose 37.2

Miami 36.9

New York 31.5

Chicago 28.0

Los Angeles 25.6

Source: American Highway Users Alliance, Reported by The Washington Post